I liked DDG because it respected the user. Limiting what I can see in order to make sure I don't see "Russian disinformation" seems to me like the exact opposite of respecting the user. Will be uninstalling soon if this intensifies.
I remember all the "trump vs reporters" etc. compilations, that were funny... now searching for any of those terms (basically anything at all involving trump, or now russia) ignores almost everything in the searchbox, ignores all the small creators, just picks out the one keyword (trump/russia/putin/...), and show the CNN/MSNBC/... news related to that one term, and unrelated to other search terms in the search box.
We wan't search and "sort by relevant", not by "who we think is right".
It never used to do that before and that's the most frustrating part imo
(I don't think it's a 100% "must have this keyword" in the boolean sense, but it is an extremely strong suggestion to the engine.)
Maybe we have finally reached the point where people don't know boolean operators anymore though
This no longer works very well. A while ago I was searching for the linux syscall which is identified in the manpages as 'splice(2)'
If I didn't include quote marks, I basically got pages of junk.
If I did include quote marks I basically got a page of junk and then a single relevant link halfway down the second page followed by another page and a half of junk.
I know to use 'verbatim' now but still very much a downgrade in terms of user experience.
But to your point, strict "___" searches do not seem to be respected as much anymore.
I never get new from Drudge, but that doesn't mean I can't see the issue with my search engine trying to hide what I'm looking for from me.
Unless you were searching for anything recipe-related, in which case they will push results from their partner 'yummly'. Or if you were trying to get literal result from you search string, which it will apparently silently ignore if it doesn't find enough results.
Honestly, I'll dump DDG in a heartbeat whenever I find something even marginally better. Their only edge is the '!' syntax which I haven't yet bothered to find an independent solution for.
The actual logic behind it isn't anything stunning, it finds a bang, removes it from the query, then forwards the query to the search engine that was requested.
I was only on the wait list for a couple of weeks before getting an invite; worth jumping in.
I simply mimic that bang behavior using my browser's ability to add custom searches. It's a slight pain to set up on a fresh install because of all the extra addresses I manually plug in but once done, I'm not necessarily tied to any search engine. If you're in Chromium you can right-click on the address bar and see the option to select "manage search engines." From there just start editing commands and changing things from ":yt" to "!yt" like we're used to. yt being a YouTube search.
Your usage might be vastly different than mine but I found myself using sipmle things like !yt (youtube) or !hn (hackernews search) for the most part. Hardly anything beyond that and a few specific Wikis.
For what it's worth, Brave's search engine also uses that ! bang feature though I'm not sure to what extent compared to DuckDuckGo.
Is there any evidence that they actually fulfilled their promises?
Still don't see the link to the actual site either.
Searching for "drudge report" brings up drudgereport.com.
Also, after having searched for both "drudge" and "drudge report" several times in a row, drudgereport.com is the top result for both searches.
> drudge.com
Which is not the Drudge Report, but the Drudge "Retort". The Drudge Report, seems to be completely removed, obviously intentionally.
If I'm wrong, let me know. But I'd be very surprised if you're getting the Drudge Report at the top hit, and everybody else isn't getting it on the first multiple pages.
What I did notice was that if I go directly to the Drudge Report, it's "not secure." Seems to only be happening the first time I load the page. I wonder if that has something to do with it.